Until recently , the contractor with the best excuse for paying my draw late was this :"We put the check in the mail , but the mail truck had a wreck , losing some of the mail , including your check ."

I think today's beat that :This is a nation wide maintenance company , short and sweet :"We ran out of checks , we had to reorder them so it will be two weeks "

Service Com says 45 days , but they give themselves 60 before you can complain . They rarely pay before about 70 days . They tell us they don't like our "verbage" when we ask them to be professional and pay on time . If business was better I would drop them , right now it seems late money is better than no money .

My wife used to work for a big builder who was notoriously "slow pay". They considered that part of the profit margin. The longer you can hold onto your money the less it costs you. It was one of her biggest gripes and she was always fighting with them to get her trades paid faster. Usually the squeaky wheel does get the grease so it is worth complaining about.

It might be worth filing before the bankruptcy court. I have a neighbor who stuck with it and eventually got money out of Evinrude for a warranty complaint on a 3 year old motor.He worked his way through the process, going from #2000+ up to number #150 or so and they finally just paid him off to clear the way for the big creditors. He used to get a box of papers in the mail every month or so. I guess they figured out it was more expensive to keep supplying with him with documents than it was to pay him. He got several hundred from Bombardier as a partial warranty settlement and another several hundred from Bank of America just to get out of the way.

You are right about the IRS, they usually leave scorched earth and a lien on future earnings when they are involved but I would still follow up in case the tax problem isn't really that bad and something survives. You might be the only other claimant standing if everyone else gives up.